Intro to Heat Transfer — Lesson 5

Heat transfer, or the study of the temperature distribution in structures, plays an important role in almost any engineering system.  From small devices such as smartphones to large gas turbines, understanding and controlling heat can improve the performance and reliability of engineered products. In this lesson we will learn how to perform thermal analysis of a laptop and obtain temperature distribution over it.

To avoid overheating of a laptop, engineers need to appropriately design for heat absorption and heat dissipation to the open air. A heat sink helps to achieve these goals. In this simulation, we use a simplified laptop geometry to study the effects of a heat sink in cooling down a laptop.

Simulation Files

Download the zip file and extract the contents. Go through the Readme file. Follow along with the provided How To video file. The student version of Ansys simulation software can be downloaded here.